Assembled another Death Knight. Varnished the last three Dire Wolves. Started detailing the Fell Bat bases with Hirst Arts resin gravestones.

Varnished three Dire Wolves. Another three just need minor base detailing and this unit will be complete. Resin set very nicely in the old Mordheim fountain, so now I’m definitely inspired to create some river or pond features for Mordheim/WHFB.

Re-reading the Flames of War rulebook and mulling over painting some more WWII 15mm figures. I’m still not entirely happy with the paint scheme I’m using and painting decent desert infantry bases still eludes me for the NZ2EF I’m trying to put together.

Mixed a small test batch of the Spotlight resin and poured another layer in that old Mordheim fountain. Seems to work quite well although I neglected to colour it with inks. I’m not sure if there’s enough to create several feet of river section, so maybe I will just go with a few stagnant ponds for Warhammer and a sewer or two for Mordheim.

My dear wife was on the new PC last night so I had no choice but to do some painting. Working on the Dire Wolf bases. Tried painting their eyes but think I’ll just black them over again and maybe apply so gloss varnish post varnishing. Assembled a second Death Knight.

Picked up a high gloss resin kit for $40NZ from Spotlight. They obviously don’t restock their shelves very regularly as there was some very old kits where one bottle of the two part resin had visibly aged in the sunlight (turned brown). I studiously avoided those kits. Tempted to use it to build some river sections, however I might build a small experimental terrain piece first. Maybe a stagnant pond or something…

Still haven’t finished those damned Dire Wolves…

The Linka molds arrived on my doorstep yesterday – which is pretty good delivery time from mid-US to New Zealand considering the postal service usually goes bananas around this time of year.

I’m pleased to say the Linka molds are equal in quality to the Hirst Arts molds I’m used to. They’re considerably smaller (being HO scale) and are made from a much more rigid rubber product. However the quality of castings they turn out is superbly detailed given the scale – each brick is about 2mm across! They also seem to cast without any problems using Ultracal 30 and my usual ‘cd-cover’ method.

Linkaworld also get kudos for the packaging they arrived in. Each pair of molds was placed in a sturdy cardboard display box and then packed in the usual bubble envelope. It’s a small point but considering the distances involved I always appreciate it when goods I’ve ordered from overseas arrive unscathed. I’d have absolutely no qualms from ordering from Linkaworld again, once I secure some more spare cash.

So now it’s back to the usual casting, piling, cleaning, casting… cycle to get enough Linka pieces to make something interesting. I need to nab some Hornby Dublo pieces from my father-in-law in order to gauge scale etc.

6 Dire Wolves viciously dry brushed and given teeth and claws. Mediocre paint job, but they’re mediocre figures so what the heck. Just need eyeballs and base detailing and they’ll be done. Fell Bats will be painted next I suspect.

Also still assembling Death Knights. Have applied numerous green stuff skulls to the ex-Bretonnian barding.